Well, not tonite

Despite the loss, that may have been our best played game of the tourney so far. That first inning was ugly--just a lot of unfortunate stuff for us. I thought Taylor was throwing well. There weren't many solid hits--2 in right field, 30 ft past first and about a foot fair. Then these little bloops just past our pitcher. Such is life.

Really the only thing I had a problem with tonite was our outfield play. We missed some cutoffs, and couldn't hold the batters back at first. Ankeny's outfielders did a pretty good job with that.

We also left too many runners on base tonite. Unlike last night, our 3, 4, 5 batters did not come through when given the chance. We had the bases loaded in the top of 6, but left them there. But I'm not picking on them, because we win as a team, and we lose as a team.

We brought 32 batters to the plate and struck out 8 times, walked 4, so that means we put 20 balls in play, 7 of them base hits.
Ankeny brought 28 batters to the plate, struck out twice, we surrendered 6 walks/hbp. So they put 20 balls in play, with 9 base hits.
So very even on the offensive side, but we left 9 guys on. They didn't have as many left on, partially because we had good defense getting them out on the bases. Alex had a nice throw down to pick off a runner at 3rd. And actually we had a caught stealing down there too.

Ozzie caught a ball in CF without running his face into anything, so that is a plus. One thing I thought our outfield was better with tonite was backing stuff up. In particular Carter, Logan, and Caleb were all moving into position to back stuff up. And Taylor and Jason did a good job from the 2nd inning on, allowing no more runs.

So tomorrow will be our last game, win or lose. 8PM STORY CITY. Come early and watch the 11s at 6PM. But if you can't please have your son there by 7:15. I expect minimal screwing around if they are there earlier than that. They can watch some baseball, cheer on their buddies, and then get loosened up.

If you can work in the concession stand for a little bit of the 11 game, that would be nice. I already have 2 volunteers.